I have tried to use the Photoshop 'Merge To HDR' and Photomatix Pro but never really liked the outcome of either. I might just be doing it wrong. Anyways, I tried some layer masking of highlights in Photoshop instead and played around with the levels and got this result:

Done with three exposures from one RAW-file (-2 0 +2). Is it too much?

how exactly do you make 3 exposures of 1 raw file? u open the raw file 3 times and save it as a jpeg under different exposures or something? i think it looks great, maybe a tad overdone - still likable.